At a dinner party the other evening I had a talk about arranged marriage with a successful businessman and his wife, both from India. What struck me most were his thoughts about “the spark.”
Since the book “First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Love” made its debut, many single friends have been wondering about the concept and thinking about the possibilities. When two people share the same values, I thought to myself, of course, love is possible. First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Love
One colleague of mine defined it this way, “Sometimes you need to rub two sticks together to make a fire.” And that made perfect sense. I have always enjoyed heart-throb love and yet when I talk with friends who have sustained long-term relationships and marriages, I see that it love comes in waves.
“There needs to be chemistry,” said the business executive. “If the chemistry is not there, and there is only just a little spark, it never works out. Believe me, I know. I have seen this often in my country.”
And I tended to believe him because as our talk continued, I was reminded of a trip to The Hague in the Nineties. We were visiting a friend doing research on Turkish families in Amsterdam. At the time, many fathers were arranging marriages for their daughters. The men had been involved in the merchant trade and spent many years at sea. As their health failed, they wanted their daughters married and made arrangements to do so by having them taken out of school and given to a promised suitor.
While these were called “arranged marriages” and the government turned its head on the practice, in reality they were forced marriages.
My American friend had learned the language and become a trusted member of a group of women trying to protect their daughters from a practice that seemed almost barbaric to me.
So I was particularly surprised to have had a conversation on Sunday, only to read in the news today a piece by Estelle Shirbon regarding forced marriages in Paris. Reporting for Reuters she noted: “The Paris City Hall launched a manual on forced marriages on Wednesday to help officials spot and prevent cases of young women being coerced into matrimony.”
It seems that “An estimated 70,000 teenage girls living in France are victims or potential victims of forced marriages, many of them from immigrant families, according to a government study.”
Are we surprised that one sign is a room with 60 – 80 men on one side of the room and a young bride standing alone on the other? Paris Fights Forced Marriages
But their credit, in addition to spotting the forced marriage, they are also training officials on how to counsel and even annul such marriages if necessary. Several years ago the law upped the age of marriage from 15 to 18. No to Forced Marriages
It seems shocking to us that such practices continue — as such, awareness and the legal system seem to be making inroads in protecting the rights of young women.
Copyright 2008 Rita Watson